It’s important to know that setting up a Facebook fan page, a group page, a Twitter account, and a LinkedIn account alone is not enough. That was my mistake. I was the oaf at the cocktail party who stood on the table and screamed how great Altrusa is and how each person should join. I thought if I said it enough times, people would listen. I was wrong. There are ways to do this that take a bit more time and effort but should yield better results.
Let’s go back to the analogy of the cocktail party or another social event. How do we actually behave here? What we typically do is join a group that has already gathered for conversation. Again, we don’t just butt in with what we think we should be talking about; we listen for a while.
This is what we should do to kick off a successful social media campaign. Start by listening. Join or “like” the social media groups that have similar goals as some of your service projects or fund-raising projects. For instance, if your group does work with the food bank, consider joining groups about feeding the hungry. If you work on literacy projects, find groups regarding literacy. When you join these groups, start by simply reading the comments to get a feel for the group. Listen, see what the tone is, discern what’s important to these folks, watch how they do things. The next step is to interact. When you read a comment that is relatable to something your club does, mention it. For example, if the literacy group conversation moves to how it’s hard to get books to kids in impoverished areas and your club just happens to donate books, well, there’s your golden opportunity to write something like, “Our Altrusa club recently donated 500 books to the XYZ School. There’s an explanation of how we did it on our website at ….”
With this sort of comment we’ve accomplished a couple of things. First, we’ve shared that we have donated books with a group of people who think books are important. We shared a message with people who care. Second, we have referred these people who care to our website. Hopefully, these people will click the link and see pictures and video from the event and testimony from those who were there. They will see that we are people just like them, doing what they like to do.
The linking is a very important step in the process to create a following. There needs to be a ton of back and forth linking between your Facebook page, your LinkedIn account, and your webpage. Everything should eventually drive to your site, which will then drive to personal interaction. Here’s another analogy. I don’t know if you have ever done any online dating, but I think we all know the premise of how it works. This isn’t really that different. We put ourselves out there with what we hope will catch the attention of someone we’d be interested in. We make sure we’ve presented our best pictures and have descriptions that portray us in the most positive way. Once we catch the guy’s attention, we hope to start the online conversation, but of course, the eventual goal is to meet in person. Remember, if you saw a profile on Match.com that had in big, bold letters “MARRY ME NOW,” you probably would be a bit frightened away or you would at least ignore this person. Same for us, give people a chance to get to know us and then naturally they will want to become Altrusans, or at least help.
Tomorrow: The Nuts and Bolts
Deborah Hecht
2013-2015 Membership Development Committee Co-Chair (Recruitment)
Please let your voice be heard. Write your ideas, and send them to Governor Beth for publishing on “Thoughts From the Mighty Ninth.”
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